Turning Point (OR) The End is Unfunny
by PhoenixDragonDreamer
Summary: I was once known as Tex Murphy, P.I. A regular gumshoe type with an irregular paycheck.


**Fandom:** **Tex Murphy**

 **Warnings:** Character Study, Introspection, Dark Fic, Canon Character Death Mentioned, Speculation, Spoilers for Overseer, Foreshadowing of Tesla Effect

 **A/N:** Written for **puzzleprompts** 's **August Puzzle:** ** _Flight- Felines/Sphynx - Warrior/Guardian_** for _September Amnesty Month_. **Four Prompts:** Power Hour - _Flight_ **;** Creature Feature - _Cats/Feline Shifters/Sphinx_ **;** Classifieds - _Soldier/Warrior/Cop/Knight/Guard(ian)/Gladiator_ **;** Mother Nature - _Summer's heat_. (I was going to try to add in 'Cleaning Up after Others' and 'Right/Wrong, True/False', but I think I fell rather short on those.) So! Here I am, writing again. And doing what I (threatened) lamented that I'd do...write for a fandom that no one knows/will read/cares about in the slightest, lol! I'm afraid I stumbled terribly on the beautiful wit, banter and charm that is the Tex Murphy series, but considering where Tex is headed (this is set after the events of _Overseer_ and a couple of years before _Tesla Effect_ ), I can hopefully be forgiven my errors and sloppy attempts to dabble in this universe. I had wanted to write something for **puzzleprompts** ever since it started up, but Musie and I could never get with the program. It has been a while since I have penned a darned thing - and though I have other fandom projects coming up soon (Eleventy - eeee!), I wanted to get my feet wet again with something that was new and didn't have any major pressure behind it. Something harmless and just for fun - (though as always, I worry about the characters, settings and characterization of the people involved!). Hopefully I got close. Even _half-right_ would make me content! So - as per usual, this fic is mostly unbeta'd and written in one go. Please forgive any mistakes and/or blatant vagueness. As always, I apologize for any repetition, misspellings, sentence fails, grammatical oh-noes and general horridness. Unbeta'd fic is overly-thinky/wandery/dark/blithery and unbeta'd.

 **Disclaimer(s):** _I do not own the epic Tex Murphy, his friends, his foes or his world. That priviledge goes to excellent Chris Jones, Aaron Conners, Access Games and Big Finish Games. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about in their awesome sandbox!_

* * *

I was tired. To the bone. Not that such things had ever mattered much to me (with the life I lead, tired – as well as bloodied and/or blind drunk – was just part of the gig). These days, it mattered even less than before; but this was a special kind of tired. The things that once were a simple pleasure were like ashes in my mouth. The world seemed flatter, the dark spaces pitched in the deepest black, even as the light held no comfort.

As if it ever had.

I was once known as Tex Murphy, P.I. A regular gumshoe type with an irregular paycheck. A man out of time in a world that was moving too fast. I don't know if that quite fit anymore. It was like stepping into shoes that were once familiar, but you found you had outgrown them. The seams of that life were strained: relationships, work – the day to day that was a part of the life of every norm and mutant on this rotating ball of mud in the vast, wide universe of rotating mud balls.

None of it seemed to matter this late in the game. And yes, that held even for the simple pleasures.

The Colonel would have been pleased to see I had come up in the world. Might have even appreciated how I had 'grown up' as he would say. But he wouldn't recognize who I was anymore. I certainly didn't. I don't know if that was a good thing or not – but let's just say I had a habit of avoiding mirrors lately. I don't know if that was for me or the man on the other side of that glass, but neither of us wanted to know one another.

Chelsee would have been disappointed.

Actually, I don't know _what_ she would have been. It had been three years to the day she was pronounced dead. Officially, that is. The first time she had been declared dead, I was up to my eyeballs in sedatives, rocking the sponge-bath from hell while chained (naked no less), to a mattress while the Bad Guys figured out what to do with me. I got out of there in one piece (more or less), but couldn't say the same for Chelsee.

There was a whole lot of time between then and now. Three years is a lifetime. The numbness still hadn't set in. The nightmares were worse than ever. But I had a way to fix that.

Got a new place – away from the painful reminders and the sympathetic, knowing faces of my former friends. I was stepping out with a new girl and had even celebrated my latest payday with a brand new speeder – XL class. Cadio series. Gone was the Tex who struggled to pay his tabs with Louie at the Brew and Stew and with Nilo at The Ritz. I still kept the old place, but I wasn't sure if that was out of a twisted sense of nostalgia, or just the need to keep that wound close to my soul – open and fresh and festering. Like the anger I couldn't seem to shake anymore. The dimwit from my last case probably knew more about that than I did. Storm clouds were coming in – and I was the lightning.

I think that was another reason I avoided Chandler Avenue and all the people I had come to know and love over the last decade. It wasn't just the memories and the pain…there was blood on my hands. It was true that you couldn't wash it off. But you could damn sure cover it up. Just not as successfully when you are face to face with someone who called you a friend.

I didn't have friends anymore.

I thought I liked it better that way. But on days like today, I wasn't so sure.

 **TM – TM – TM – TM – TM**

It was a high (and dry) Radiation Day. There had been several over the last few weeks in New San Francisco, but today was the ultimate. It was like Satan decided to have a barbeque and we were all invited, whether we wanted to go or not. The holo-cast didn't even bother to tell the populace to stay indoors. It was pretty much a no brainer.

So, being without brains, I was out and about, flying through the ochre clouds high over the city to speak to my old buddy and verbal sparring partner, Mac Malden at the NSFPD. The cop-shop wasn't too far from my new digs, but Detective Malden didn't need to know that. The Ritz was still my main place of business as far as New San Francisco's 'finest' was concerned and I aimed to keep it that way; even as the 'official' business wasn't really running these days, I still had a business. Just not the one that I took all those night-courses for in Utah all those years ago. My new one was sheer venture capital. I ventured. I got capital.

Malden just didn't need to know what kind of ventures those were. Cops hardly needed a reason to be nosy, but Mac was less nosy than he was greedy and lazy. I hoped some other sucker was keeping him in the papers, because _this_ sucker was aiming to stay out of the headlines – or the hot seat. Malden had a rep to maintain, so visits like this one were semi-traditional. He couldn't get much higher in the NSFPD than he was now without becoming Commissioner, but after my Killing Moon and Pandora Directive cases (career launchers for him, career killers for me), he still gave it the old college try. Which meant I had to play like I was still good ol' Murph and he wasn't just some slime-ball cop looking to make a killing out of my measly cache of case-files.

"Tex Murphy, as I live and breathe," Malden said comfortably, grin affixed to his face like someone had Stupid-Glued it there. "Nice that you can make time for me, with your heavy caseloads and all."

"Yeah, they're really breaking my back," I replied, not wanting to play along today of all days, but I knowing I had no real choice. Mac may be fat, greedy and lazy, but he wasn't stupid. And I needed him breathing down my shadow like I needed to make sweet love to an hydrogen atom infuser. "What can I do for you, Detective?"

"Ho-ho, 'Detective' is it? You want something from me, Murphy?" Said with that cheesy, smarmy sing-song like he knew something I didn't.

I had to throttle back the urge to punch him: just beat him within half an inch of his miserable life – the surprise of that feeling stopped me from actually doing it. Something was seriously wrong with me lately and I should have been alarmed that I didn't care at all. Should have been. I wasn't. It almost felt _good_ , that sudden rise of black anger, it felt _right_ ; and the queasy feeling on the heels of that realization had me pause a little too long in my response.

"You called me, Mac," the whipsaw of dark feeling left me wrung out and more than just a little breathless. Man, I needed a drink. Or three. "So I assumed that you wanted me to get you promoted to Commissioner this time. But so far, no world-saving cases have landed in my lap, so we're both out of luck – me on the paycheck, you on the promotion."

Mac blinked, a little taken aback by the bitterness of my tone. I wasn't far behind him in that regard. Stunned at my own verbal punch, I bit my lip and let some of the bone-dead exhaustion seep through to muffle the bite I just took outta his hide. We sparred more often than not, but we never battled - and staying on his good side was still a top priority.

"Sorry about that, Detective…you wanted to see me about?"

I suppose composing my overall demeanor to look like something the whipped puppy stepped in worked, though the grin that Malden always wore like a cheap suit had all but disappeared from his craggy features. He heaved himself out of his chair and ambled the two steps to his ancient coffee-pot, wagging a cup at me to see if I was interested (when wasn't I?), pouring us both a generous slug in non-too-clean mugs as he collated his thoughts.

I was once more reminded that the man was quick. He wasn't a genius and he was stupifyingly lazy, but he wasn't a moron, either. Treading carefully for the next few weeks would be a wise move on my part. The idea of it made me even _more_ tired – but the prospect of being questioned about everything from my new speeder, to my new apartment, to where the money was coming from, was enough to keep me awake for the next _month_ – so I put a clamp on my wise-ass and made like a dutiful dolt at the altar of Detective Malden's patience.

"Well, Murphy, you remember the Black Cat case a year or so back?"

"Yeahhhh," I replied, wincing when he dropped back into his chair with a graceless ' _oof'_ , the hapless piece of furniture making a sharp cracking noise that sounded not too far off from a gunshot. I should know. Firearms and me have a thing. As in, I'm usually ducking them as they are aimed at me.

At least, that's how it was a few years ago.

I shifted uncomfortably as I nodded to his question, taking a sip of piping hot sludge so I wouldn't have to make any further replies in what would likely be an awkward conversation. The coffee could strip paint (no, it really could), so I was confident that my ability to shove my foot in my mouth any further was being axed with each sip. Who knew – maybe I'd get lucky and Mac would just settle for monotonous, rambling shop talk for a few minutes, before letting me skedaddle, as he always did. Good old Tex Murphy. What a maroon.

The chair made another terrible shrieking noise as he swiveled to lean across the desk, his own coffee teetering on the edge of said desk in open flirting disaster with his elbow. He paid it no mind, beady little eyes boring holes into my forehead as he re-filled me in on relevant details that neither of us could forget anytime soon: a dead heir to the Frisque fortune, the missing prototype guard-cat – and an empty bank account of said heir's _also_ missing fiancée. It had seemed an open and shut case at the time, but it was more open than shut, even 14 months later. The missing fiancée had been dead (as it turned out) at least as long as her beau had been and the robotic-cat (reported to be all the envy of Old Japan) was found scattered across the wastelands of Chicago. Still no idea whodunit: and really – _that_ was the reason Malden called me in?

"We have a new lead in the case," Malden half-whispered, half-barked, peering around his office like a little kid getting ready to filch cookies from the proverbial jar. "You know I can't share _too_ much with you, Murphy – but you were a real help in finding the fiancée, so –"

"I have a case," I blurted, not sure why I said it, but knowing it was the only thing that could be said without getting into further trouble with NSFPD, much less Mac himself. I needed out of that office like yesterday and I certainly didn't need to get drawn back into a cold case that reminded me too much of my own problems (as odd as that may sound).

Sitting here with Malden reminded me of those old (and mostly not so good) times; and seeing as how he could never catch a lead on Chelsee's killer (killers?), I found the idea of putting another notch on his police-belt in this particular cold case unappealing and more than a little nauseating. It wasn't like it would do anything for me, after all. It never had, so why would it start now? The sudden, biting rage at being dragged down here for nothing more than stroking Mac's ego made me want me to punch him again; maybe not even stop at just a punch. That, more than anything else (his overall incompetence aside), made me want to beat feet and never look back.

"You do?" Malden blinked in surprise and I could feel that terrible urge to knock him senseless yank at its fraying chain. Of course someone like _me_ could never have a case that Mac wouldn't know about. I was an open frigging book – everyone knew that. Inept detective, booze-hound, skirt-chaser and punching bag. The rage tried to turn inward and swallowing around it was a lot harder this time.

Or maybe it was just the coffee.

I managed to (barely) keep the angry sneer out of my voice as I answered, the incredulous look on his face funny and not-so-funny all at once.

"Yeah, Mac…big case. I had to see a man about a dog. And I'm kinda on the clock, so if there isn't anything else?"

"Nahhh, you go on Murphy. And if you need anything –"

"You're on vacation, yeah I know," I chuckled reflexively, insides feeling hollow and compressed at the once-familiar (and sought after) banter. The effort only served to make me more exhausted and for a moment (just a small one), I wanted to be the Tex he knew. I missed that guy. Not often, but I did.

Today most of all.

"Yeah," Mac echoed, leaning back in his chair as though I actually _had_ punched him, humor gone completely, leaving only confusion and discomfort in its wake. "Yeah, I'll be on vacation. Get out of my office, Murphy."

Same words as always. No bite to them, though, which pretty much said all that needed to be said.

I guess there truly is no going back.

I suppose that here, at this moment, is where the old Tex truly met his Maker. I'm not completely sure as I never thought about it much in the weeks and months to come. But this feels like where it all ended. Not on Chandler Avenue when Louie told me to get out and never come back (drunk or otherwise). Not when I visited old Beek Nariz after he'd had a problem with his tongue flapping too much about me and my business. Right here in Detective Mac Malden's office.

Funny, really. It was where it all began in a way, (my days with the Colonel notwithstanding). Only fitting that the Tex that found his way in the world here should also end here.

"See you around, Detective," I muttered, settling my fedora on my head with a firm tug, though the gesture felt unfamiliar and off-set. Like a piano gone out of tune.

"Not if I see you first, Tex," Malden said sadly, the use of my name jolting me a little – but once again, not something I'd think of for a long time to come. "By the way – Tex?"

"Yeah, Detective?"

"The lead…in the case? The name is Jen Lee. I don't know if that means anything to you, but if you get the time –"

"I'll call you, Mac," I said with a shrug, knowing I wouldn't do any such thing. I think he knew it, too. Years later, we would never mention this conversation. Years later we didn't really talk anymore – as Commissioner Malden was beyond such petty things as interrogation – and I was beyond such petty things as caring what he and his thug-cronies thought. I was better at hiding the bodies than they ever would be at finding them…

I did follow that lead, though. Little did I know it was the road to a hell that made the hell of that particular day look like a pre-WWIII Disney trip.

Right or wrong, I was becoming someone else. The man that Chelsee had loved burned with her in my old jalopy of a speeder. That life was gone. A new one was just ahead.

A storm was coming.

It was time to be the lightning.


End file.
